The Diet Circle

                        “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”

                                                                                                       ~ George Santayana

 

The Devil’s Circle by Stephen Batchelor

"A man lost in a desert can trudge for hours through the sands until he sees ahead of him an unmistakable line of foot prints leading to the horizon. But his joy on finding a trail turns to despair when he realizes the tracks are his own. Since one limb was a few millimeters longer than the other or habit or injury inclined him to step fractionally further with one leg, he consistently veered to the right or left. Without a path or landmark to guide him, he traced a vast circle while convinced he was walking in a straight line.”

This describes life’s tendency to repeat itself…

“Like someone lost in a desert, I feel compelled to struggle ahead, unaware that a devil’s circle will only bring me back to where I began. Through the years, I return again and again to the same stock obsessions. I flick through the tomb of my achievements in the blink of an eye only to feel that nothing has really happened. I am still the anxious and puzzled child who set out on the journey.”

How many times has this occurred in our efforts to lose weight?

“No matter what experience has taught us in the past, we insist on making the same mistakes again and again. A devil's circle is addictive. It raises you to dizzy heights of rapture only to bring you crashing down into thoughts of despair. Yet I do not hesitate to start the diabolic cycle again. I find it hard to resist the urge to go through the familiar and comforting motions of habit, even when I know that the end result will be the anxious craving to repeat the experience again.”

A path leads into unknown territory, whereas a circle goes over the same ground again and again. The enticing avenues that a devil’s circle offers are not paths at all.

“New paths are not familiar and secure. The new patterns we will create are not as stable or predictable as they once appeared. In the devil's circle, not only does the devil block the way to freedom, he tricks one into following paths that appear promising, but lead only to frustration and disillusion.”

Batchelor concludes… "In the end, we humans are the only adequate metaphor for the Devil"